M1210 and non-InFocus Projectors

:^/ I also own an XPS M1210, and have yet to hook the external monitor connection to anything, and so cannot confirm your experience.  My S-Video port works fine with our Zenith television set, for what it's worth.

I too am interested in seeing what others may have to say about this, and whether it's common to the M1210 line, or just to your laptop in particular.

This is a problem with several M1210's I have used.  I believe it depends on whether the item is "Smart" ie gives information back to the computer.  I can plug mine into an external monitor and it works fine, but several projectors or TV's no output no matter what I do.  I have tried many things.. if you find a solution I will be very interested.   

Jeff

just start the windows mobility center and click connect display and maybe turn on presentation (if you want). This will disable screensaver and such things.

Just in case somebody reads this, who uses linux: use the nvidia driver and restart the X server. It external projector/display/whatever is then automatically configured.

That always worked for me.

I have a similar problem with a D620 that also has nVidia graphics.  My machine can link to certain projectors and monitors, but not to others.  I have not seen a pattern, expcept that most monitors work OK, except cheap LG models.  Most older projectors do not work.  Newer projectors seem to be hit or miss.

I have found that I can "jump start" the external display but hooking up a monitor, then switching my display to the monitor, then unplugging the monitor and replugging the cable to the projector.  Not very cool at a customer site and I'm completely out of luck if there is no monitor in the meeting room.

This is causing me so much grief that I will have to replace my laptop with another if this can't be sorted out.

We have experienced the same problem.  In my opinion, the occurrence of the problem does not depend on the brand of the projector, but on the length of the signal cable.  Relatively short cables, such as would be found on a table-top projector, present no problem.  The problem arises when attaching to a projector with a long cable -- such as might be found on a ceiling-mounted projector.

We have tried VGA signal boosters, but that didn't work.

We've been successful with the following (painful) workaround:  Connect an ordinary external monitor to the M1210.  Set things up as though the external monitor were the projector.  Once the setup is working, remove the signal cable coming from the monitor and replace it with the real projector's cable.

Getting pretty much the same as 'Pschatz100' above. Using Dell Latitude D620 - Win xp professional, and cannot display on most projectors. Try Fn+F8 to no avail. Sometimes, it seems to recognize that the projector is there, because when I press FnF8, I can see the little pop-up with the three display possibilities (1. laptop screen only, 2 laptop screen + projector, 3 projector only). However, choosing option 2 (or 3) does nothing (display remains on laptop, and nothing happens on projector).

Hard to troubleshoot, because when I get back to my company, it works fine on our (fairly new) Sony projectors.

ANOTHER WEIRD SYMPTOM: With no projector attached (to my d620), if I go to Display Properties --> Settings tab, I can see TWO monitor icons. 1 and 2. There is nothing attachced. If I press FnF8, it says, as you'd expect,  "no external display is attached". For Display # 2, I get "inactive", but what is it? Why is it there at all? Under "Display:", I have

1. (Multiple Monitors) on NVIDIA Quadro NVS 110M

2. Default Monitor on NVIDIA Quadro NVS 110M

BACK TO THE PROJECTOR PROBLEM: Some people have mentioned things about "video cable too long" but when the client attaches their own laptops, it works fine. Others mentioned about installing older Nvidia drivers. I tried R173741, it installed ok, but I still have that weird symptom with the TWO monitors. Any ideas? Can Dell help us?

I do not think the problem has anything to do with the graphics drivers.  For the record, however, I did have some other problems when I used drivers from nVidia's site - so definitely stay with the Dell drivers.  I'm running the latest version from the Dell site.

Since the issue is intermittent, it is hard to determine for certain, but I do not recall having the problem when I first got my D620 a couple of years ago.  I thought it might be related to a recent bios update, so I took a look at my bios settings and made the following change:

Primary Video:  the bios was set to the default value "DOCK VIDEO CARD."  I changed the setting to "ONBOARD VIDEO."  According to the documentation, this setting should be selected when using the Multi-monitor feature provided by some operating systems.

I have not had the problem since making this change.  Of course, it could be that I just have not come across a problem projector.  I don't know.  For the record, a certain LG monitor that gave me a problem works OK now.  Also, changing this setting does not seem to have affected my normal desktop configuration (two Dell monitors on a docking station.)

-Pschatz100